With a crucial deadline in the negotiations over Iran's disputed nuclear program less than a month away, negotiators are hard at work in this picturesque town trying to hammer out a framework agreement for a deal.

It's a complicated process many years in the making that, as with many international negotiations, brings with it varying expectations from each side.

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Switzerland for the second time in recent weeks for a series of meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif as the clock ticks down.

While Kerry and other U.S. officials have long maintained that no deal is preferable to one that can be easily broken, Kerry laid out a broad vision of what an acceptable deal to him would look like.

"Any deal that we would possibly agree to would make the international community, and especially Israel, safer than it is today. That's our standard," Kerry said Monday as his meetings with Zarif began.

What does the U.S. want?

For its part, the United States is looking for the elimination of any ability on the part of Iran to make a nuclear weapon in the future.

At the very least, the United States and its partners in these negotiations, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany, the so-called P5+1, want to extend the time needed for Iran to assemble a weapon, the so-called breakout time, to be extended to a year in order to provide enough of a gap to react to such a decision.

In an interview with Reuters on Monday, President Barack Obama said Iran should commit to a verifiable freeze of at least 10 years in its nuclear activity as part of any final agreement.

"If, in fact, Iran is willing to agree to double-digit years of keeping their program where it is right now and, in fact, rolling back elements of it that currently exist ... if we've got that, and we've got a way of verifying that, there's no other steps we can take that would give us such assurance that they don't have a nuclear weapon," Obama said.

What does Iran want?

Iran would like complete relief from the international sanctions that are crippling its economy, particularly in the wake of falling global oil prices. For Iran, anything less is a non-starter.

"Our negotiating partners, particularly the western countries and particularly the United States, must once and for all, come to the political understanding that sanctions and agreement don't go together," Zarif said Monday. "If they want an agreement, sanctions must go."

Getting the balance right on any potential deal, particularly the sanctions question, will be tricky as the United States and its allies are pushing for an incremental lifting of sanctions in order to maintain leverage to ensure Iran is abiding by the agreement.

How do the sides get to a deal?

While both sides say the gaps between the two sides are narrowing, the big remaining question is how you get to a deal that all sides can agree on.

"There are gaps. There's certainly gaps and we're starting to move forward but it's a lot of work," Zarif told CNN on Tuesday. When asked how many times the sides plan to meet Tuesday, he replied, "As many times as necessary."

They are keeping that promise -- having met late into the night Monday and starting early again in the morning -- in talks that have developed a steady rhythm: meet for an hour, head back to confer with staff, then meet again. This round of talks will continue into Wednesday.

Sticking points

In order to increase that breakout time, the P5+1 negotiators say there needs to be a drastic reduction in the number of Iranian centrifuges, the devices used to enrich uranium to the higher level of purity needed for a nuclear bomb.

Iran currently has approximately 20,000 centrifuges, but it has many times balked at reducing that number to the few thousand centrifuges that international negotiators are pushing for in any agreement.

There is also the question of what you do with the growing stockpile of enriched uranium currently inside Iran.

While the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency has not seen evidence that Iran has enriched its uranium stockpile to levels approaching 20% in recent months (nuclear weapons typically require enrichment to 90%), Iran views questions over its nuclear abilities as an affront to its sovereignty.

In the past, negotiators have raised the prospect of shipping Iran's uranium supply to a third country -- Russia is often mentioned as a candidate -- in order to convert that fuel down to very low levels that would only be suitable for civilian power plants.

And there is also the sticking point of increasing the level of monitoring at Iran's nuclear facilities so Iran doesn't not have the capability to cheat on any deal reached.

The IAEA currently has the ability to monitor a variety of nuclear sites, but the government has refused access to a sensitive site that many feel has been used in the past to test various explosive devices that could be part of a potential military dimension to Iran's nuclear program.

"We have asked questions and the questions are clear, so (Iran) can answer," IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said Monday.

Looming deadlines

Added to all this complexity are the two separate deadlines the entire enterprise is up against.

Negotiators are working toward a deadline at the end of March to reach a political framework that would spell out the elements that both sides agree would form the basis of a deal. That would then pave the way for a complete and final agreement with all the technical details addressed to be reached by the end of June.

There is of course the possibility of reaching a framework agreement only to have it fall apart as the two sides work to finalize the details for the complete deal.

Despite the repeated rhetoric from both sides that the gaps between the two have been diminishing for a number of weeks, the bridging of those final gaps are likely to prove to be the most difficult ones as the negotiating window closes.

Investigation was ordered by AG Eric Holder

A Justice Department civil rights investigation has concluded that the Ferguson Police Department and the city's municipal court engaged in a "pattern and practice" of discrimination against African Americans, targeting them disproportionately for traffic stops, use of force, and jail sentences, according to a U.S. law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

The probe is the result of an investigation ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder after the police shooting that killed Michael Brown last summer.

Among the findings, reviewed by CNN: from 2012 to 2014, 85% of people subject to vehicle stops by Ferguson police were African American; 90% of those who received citations were black; and 93% of people arrested were black. This while 67% of the Ferguson population is black.

In 88% of the cases in which the Ferguson police reported using force, it was against African Americans. During the period 2012-2014 black drivers were twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during traffic stops, but 26% less likely to be found in possession of contraband.

Blacks were disproportionately more likely to be cited for minor infractions: 95% of tickets for "manner of walking in roadway," essentially jaywalking, were against African Americans. Also, 94% of all "failure to comply" charges were filed against black people.

The findings in the investigation are expected to be made public as soon as Wednesday, and the Justice Department is expected to pursue a court-supervised consent decree that requires the city of Ferguson to make changes to its police and courts.

According to the findings, reviewed by CNN, African Americans were 68% less likely to have their cases dismissed by a Ferguson municipal judge, and were overwhelmingly more likely to be arrested during traffic stops solely for an outstanding warrant by the Ferguson courts.

The investigators found evidence of racist jokes being sent around by Ferguson police and court officials. One November 2008 email read in part that President Barack Obama wouldn't likely be President for long because "what black man holds a steady job for four years."

Another jokes that made the rounds on Ferguson government email in May 2011 said: "An African American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $3000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said: 'Crimestoppers.'"

John Boehner is facing his toughest week yet as speaker of the House of Representatives -- and that's saying a lot after a tumultuous four years of repeated efforts by his own Republican colleagues to derail his legislative agenda.

House Speaker John Boehner and his top lieutenants are downplaying the rift among Republicans that was exposed during last week's intense wrangling over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

The House cleared legislation Tuesday that will keep the agency operating through the end of September after a standoff last week threatened to shutter the agency and furlough thousands of workers. The 257-167 vote sends the bill to President Barack Obama for his signature.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who rarely casts votes, backed the bill, along with his top lieutenants. A majority of House Republicans opposed the bill. Just 75 GOP lawmakers joined with 182 Democrats to push it across the finish line.

The legislation does nothing to rein in Obama's immigration executive orders -- a top priority of conservatives. That issue was a sticking point for weeks as Republicans tried to tie DHS funding to the repeal of the orders but the party couldn't overcome Democratic filibusters in the Senate.

The debate sparked plenty of drama on Capitol Hill over the past week. The House stayed in session late into the night on Friday after conservatives helped block a bill that would have kept DHS open for 3 weeks. Amid rumors of a potential coup, Speaker John Boehner pushed through a bill that kept the agency open until March 6 -- just enough time to work out today's deal.

Boehner told his members Tuesday morning that he had run out of options and the Senate couldn't pass a bill with immigration language attached.

He asked if anyone had any questions and not one member stood up or complained.

According to the documents, Petraeus admitted removing several so-called black books -- notebooks in which he kept classified and non-classified information from his tenure as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan -- and giving them to his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

On November 9, 2012, he resigned from his CIA post, citing personal reasons.

Petraeus allegedly provided classified intelligence to his lover, Broadwell, while he was director of the CIA. The married mother of two and former military officer was writing a book about the general at the time.

During his time as commander in Afghanistan, Petraeus kept personal notes including classified information in eight 5-by-8 inch black notebooks. The classified information including identity of covert officers, war strategy, notes from diplomatic and national security meetings and security code words.

In August 2011, according to the court documents, Petraeus dropped off the notebooks to a house in Washington, D.C., so Broadwell could access them. He later retrieved them and brought them to his home in Arlington, Va.

After Petraeus resigned in 2012 he told the government he had no classified materials in his possession.

That turned out not to be true when the FBI in April 2013 conducted a search of his house and found the black notebooks in an unlocked desk drawer in a first floor study.

When he was questioned by the FBI, he lied and claimed that he had never provided classified information to anyone not authorized to have it, according to the court documents.

The relationship came to light during an FBI investigation into a complaint that Broadwell was allegedly sending harassing e-mails to another woman who was close to Petraeus, a U.S. official told CNN in January.